"Simplifying The Student Financial Aid Application" America's future economic strength depends on the quality of our education. Countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow. President Barack Obama is calling for America to once again lead the world in college graduates. He has proposed nearly $200 billion in new scholarships and tax credits for college tuition. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan outlined another key component of the Administration's higher education agenda: its plan to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The form imposes a needlessly difficult obstacle in the path of 16 million college students and their families each year. Each student is asked as many as 153 questions, most of which have little or no effect on actual financial aid packages. Experts believe that the difficulty of the application and unpredictability of the aid awards undermine student aid's ability to reach students who are unsure whether they can afford college. And there are 1.5 million enrolled students who are probably eligible for Pell grants but failed to apply. In the coming months, the Departments of Education and Treasury will work together to simplify the financial aid process by modernizing the online application, seeking legislation that will eliminate unnecessary questions, and creating an easy process for students to apply by using tax data already available. Three Steps to A Simpler Application Secretary Duncan is announcing a shorter and simpler online application that skips unnecessary questions, legislation to remove more than half of the financial questions, and a web application that will let some families easily answer the remaining financial questions with data from the Internal Revenue Service. Overhaul the Online Application. Starting this summer, the Education Department will allow students who are at least 24 or married, who are automatically exempted from providing their parents' financial information, to skip the remaining 11 questions intended only to determine whether parental information is necessary. Other improvements will allow men older than 26 to skip the question about Selective Service registration and consolidate the three questions on homelessness. More Improvements in January: A series of additional improvements will be implemented in January. Students with low incomes will no longer be asked for asset information, which is not used to determine their aid eligibility. Only returning students will be asked about prior drug convictions because the question does not affect first-year students. And the Education Department will work with state agencies to make it easier to answer questions that the states need but the federal government does not. Eliminate Questions through Legislation. Secretary Duncan called on Congress to let students and families apply for financial aid with the information on their tax returns, without needing to gather bank statements, investment information, and documentation of any untaxed income. These changes would make the student aid application simpler and fairer, and they would open the door to using IRS data for the remaining financial questions, reducing the FAFSA to easy personal questions. Answer the Remaining Financial Questions with Tax Data. Begining in January, students applying for financial aid for the spring semester will be able to seamlessly retrieve their relevant tax information from the IRS for easy completion of the online FAFSA. The Departments of Education and Treasury will be working together to examine the possibily of expanding this option to all students in the future.